Studio: international art (23.1901)

The National Competition

growing plants, by William
S. Whelan (Dublin), show
excellent feeling for deco-
rative possibilities and a
fine restraint in the treat-
ment of surfaces. There is
also a welcome originality
and refinement in a panel
of foliage by Cicely Car-
rington Steele (Hyde), and
another by William Henry
Young (Redditch). These
three students have illus-
trated plaster-work at its
best, in pleasant contrast
with the coarse and lumpy
exercises of older days;
and have brought to it a
more penetrating and con-
structive spirit than that
of the mechanical copyist.

design' for printed muslin by fanny e. eastland (wisbech) The designs for Wall-papeiS

are numerous, and sustain
a very fair level of quality.

Curiously enough, design is weakest at the Among the best are those by E. May Brown
architectural end of the scale. Consequently, (New Cross), who succeeds in a fresh and
furniture suffers from being treated too
much from the side of pattern and
ornament and too little from the side
of proportion and form. And even
the more delicate kinds of applied art
betray here and there this lack of an
all-round sense of suitability and
balance. For example, one of the
most novel and vigorous of the women-
students' designs strikes us as making
an admirable decoration for a bath-
room wall, but turns out to be for
printed muslin. On the other hand,
a hanging cupboard, instead of being
kept flat and compact, spreads forward
into the room with a diffusion of curves
which clearly demand a solid base
resting on the floor. These lapses
of judgment only illustrate the value
of training both in large structural
work and in fine pattern at the same
time.

The plaster models include some
good decorative panels and friezes, as
well as a number of careful designs
for work to be carried out in other
materials. The dainty little low-relief
studies from meadowsweet and other stencilled wall filling by harry smith (dundee)

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